


Epilogue

by Karmula



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Epilogue, F/F, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon Fix-It, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 03:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30049083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karmula/pseuds/Karmula
Summary: Ellie's journey back to Jackson had been twice as perilous as the one to Santa Barbara; it couldn’t have been for nothing. No, Dina would make it right, would make her suffering worth it, somehow. She didn’t need it to be beautiful. She wasn’t sure anything would ever feel beautiful again, least of all herself. She just needed it all to mean something.
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 49





	Epilogue

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate description: The epilogue we deserved, aka the rambling prose I used to process my pain after finishing TLOU II for the first time, but couldn't bear to get ready for publishing until now

Everyone stared.

She’d known they would, of course. The journey back to Jackson had given Ellie more than enough time - too much time, even - to think, and even running through this scenario a thousand times over, there had never been any other conclusion. Of course they would stare. These were her friends, her neighbours, her people, and she had abandoned them, too, just as thoroughly as she had abandoned Dina. People she had protected, people she had fought alongside; children she had befriended, people her age that she had only just begun to open up to - people like Jesse, she thought, and swallowed the lump in her throat.

She’d thought herself prepared. How wrong she was.

Some looked at her with scorn, and those were bad enough. Among them, Seth, and most of the men who’d frequented his bar, disdain etched plainly in their faces. Worse were those who looked at her with shame, with disappointment; kids whose hands looked too-small without the mittens they’d been wearing the last time she’d seen them, whose chests appeared rail-thin, their eyes sad and flat and empty. Maria, who was working her lower lip between her teeth; Tommy, who hovered beside her, though they didn’t touch. Ellie felt her heart leap at the sight of his familiar face, his cheeks worn with smile lines, half-expecting him to smile now, to nod, to give her something, anything. It crashed when she realised that acknowledgement wasn’t coming. 

Ellie fisted her hands in her pockets, clinging to the sensation of skin against denim, bruising, grounding, to keep herself present. The fingers on her left hand - or, rather, the spaces where her fingers used to be - throbbed, something she would never get used to, no matter how often it happened. Phantom pains, phantom people. She felt hollow and too full, all at once. Was this a mistake?

No, it couldn’t be. The journey back to Jackson had been twice as perilous as the one to Santa Barbara had been; it couldn’t have been for nothing. The long nights spent hunched over her mutilated hands, hiding her bruised and broken body from the infected that shuffled past, the enemies she was too weak to fend off; sleeping with one eye open in abandoned buildings, inhaling mold and dust and choking on tears; waking up each day to see the canvas of her skin changing colour, splattered first with black and blue and purple, then green, then yellow, then finally, mercifully, blank once more. Fearing the unrelenting daylight, the way it threw everything into sharp relief, while also fearing the night, petrified of the monsters it brought.

No, it couldn’t be for nothing. Dina would make it right, would make her suffering worth it, somehow. She didn’t need it to be beautiful. She wasn’t sure anything would ever feel beautiful again, least of all herself. She just needed it all to mean something. Whatever Ellie had to do to make it up to her, however long it took, she was more than willing. She was devoted.

Ellie searched the sea of faces for the one she’d returned for, but found herself coming up short. Her stomach sank. Dina had come back to Jackson, right? Where else would she go? She felt her mind drift, barely tethered as it was, to the horrors that lay beyond Jackson’s walls, and her body tensed accordingly. Dina was more than capable of taking care of herself, that Ellie knew, but then again, she’d thought the same of Jesse. Of Joel... And what of little JJ? Taking care of yourself was one thing, but taking care of a baby? Their little potato?

“Dina,” she said, her voice hoarse with disuse. “Where’s Dina?”

Maria stepped forward. She looked older, her hair more silver than blonde, her jeans a little less filled-out than Ellie remembered. “Ellie,” she said, not unkindly, but reserved, and extended a hand towards her, not quite far enough to bridge the gap between them. “Honey, let’s get you patched up first, okay?” 

Ellie shook her head. “No.” Then again, more insistently: “No, Maria. Where is she? Where’s Dina?”

Maria withdrew her hand, clasping them instead in her lap, working her fingers over and under and between each other with a sound like chafing burlap. Ellie was intensely aware of them, the full ten digits, the way the tendons tensed and flexed and relaxed again under the skin. Muscle and bone, nerve endings that worked in tandem with the brain to twist and bend the knuckles, to worry the thumb and index and middle and ring and pinky finger over and under each other, over and under, over and under… 

The silence that had befallen the town upon Ellie’s arrival fell apart, whispers worming their way between the cracks; faceless workers, humming their worker drone. Gossip, chatter, outright bitching from townsfolk who clearly resented her return. Every now and then, Ellie picked up a word or two, and those were more than enough to confirm her suspicions.

Then, cutting through the buzz, the only thing that could:

“I’m here.”

Ellie spun around, relief and panic flooding her. The panic ebbed away when a figure stepped through the crowd and rushed instead to her heart, beating out a frantic rhythm against her ribs.

JJ was missing, but Dina was still wearing his sling around her neck, so he couldn’t be far. She was dressed in a soft grey flannel and stained jeans, a pair of gardening gloves tucked into her front pocket. Her hair was tied back into a loose bun from which a few errant strands had fallen free, framing her face. Ellie found herself caught off guard by just how the-same she looked. Ellie wasn't sure what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this. After all, she’d changed, hadn’t she? The person she’d been when they were together, before Abby, before all of it - that Ellie felt like little more than a memory to her now. But Dina, this Dina, could have stepped right out of one of Ellie’s dreams, a ghost from their life together on the farm, if not for the expression on her face.

Even with Dina looming over her, blocking out the sun - no, not blocking it, but replacing it; filling her vision against all reason with light and hope and possibility, despite the unreadable expression on her face - Ellie didn’t realise she’d fallen to her knees until Dina crouched down, slipping one arm around her waist and helping her to her feet.

“Everybody enjoy the show?” Dina spat, sliding her hand back out once she was sure Ellie was steady on her feet and lacing their fingers together instead. Her voice was like music to Ellie’s ears, even raised in anger like this, and she hadn’t heard music in so long.

Dina made a noise of disgust when nobody replied and plowed forward, towing Ellie behind her. Ellie caught Tommy’s eye as she passed; he at least had the decency to look ashamed, and quickly averted his gaze. The crowd parted, shuffling further back to allow them passage and then closing in again afterwards, as if even being too close to her was too much to bear. Ellie was reminded of the story of Moses, and of what Dina had said in that synagogue, a lifetime ago: “I like coming from a long line of survivors.”

If she could be even half the survivor Dina was, she would be okay.

Dina led her through the mostly-empty streets of Jackson, strung as ever with its hanging lights. They shone on Dina’s skin, the hand that held Ellie’s still-whole one shifting with olive and gold and warm brown. Ellie watched the buildings slowly fill back up again as the mob that had met her at the gate dissipated; still, it felt like a shadow of the bustling town it had been when she called it home.

Finally they arrived at Dina’s quarters. She disentangled her fingers from Ellie’s to fish in her back pocket for her key; she did not reach out to rejoin them once the door was unlocked, nor once it was closed behind them. Instead, she pivoted so they were face to face, arms folded across her chest, fixing Ellie with a piercing gaze. Ellie mirrored her stance, arms less crossed than they were drawn around herself, squeezing tightly, something she had learned to do when she was on her own.

A deep breath. Two. Her heart, pounding in her ears.

“Dina, I-”

“Did you finish it?” Dina interrupted, speaking through tight lips. Her eyes were narrow, unreadable.

Ellie hesitated, shifting her weight from foot to foot. No, and yes. And even if she had, it would never be finished. How could it? Anxiety rose like bile in her throat and instinctively she glanced around the dimly lit room, drinking in the sight, Dina’s clothes on the floor, her jacket slung over the back of a chair, and the smell, Dina and baby powder and earth, hoping these details would ground her again. By the light of the half-drawn curtains, she could just make out the shape of a cot by the bed, JJ sleeping soundly inside.

“It’s over,” she answered simply, because it was.

Dina nodded, looking down.

“It’s over,” Ellie repeated, “but I didn’t kill her. I caught up to her, I could have... but I let her go.”

“Why?” Dina whispered.

Ellie shrugged her aching shoulders. How many times had she asked herself that exact question? Had she ever been able to come up with a satisfying answer?

“It wouldn’t have fixed anything. Joel-” her voice broke. Turns out, thinking his name and speaking it aloud were two very different things. “Joel wouldn’t have wanted me too. I don’t think so, anyway. And it wouldn’t have brought him back. And... I can say his name again. Sort of. And part of me still wanted to, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to face you again if I did.”

There was a pause while Dina absorbed her words. “I’m not sorry about the farm, Ellie. I mean, I’m sorry it had to happen that way, you finding it empty... I can’t imagine how hard that must have been. But you couldn’t expect me to wait for you.” Dina met her gaze with shining eyes, the corners of her mouth downturned, her bottom lip wavering with unsteady breath. “I told you I wouldn’t do this again.”

The double meaning in her words was clear. At the time she’d first uttered them, Dina had meant she couldn’t go on this journey with Ellie again, that if she had to go, this would have to be something she undertook herself. Dina couldn’t, wouldn’t, abandon their son to help the shell of her wife quench her thirst for revenge. Now, she meant she couldn’t do _this_ \- them.

Ellie had suspected as much, but still. To hear her worst fears confirmed... it more than stung.

“But Ellie, I never stopped loving you. When we were together... I thought we were meant to be. But are either of us those people anymore?”

They weren’t. Despite how Ellie had felt when she’d first seen Dina again, the hopeful surge in her chest, the way Dina had seemed almost more like a memory than a fully-realised person in her familiarity, Ellie knew that it was impossible for her to have escaped unchanged, unscarred from all they’d been through. All _she_ had put her through.

“I know,” Ellie said, barely keeping the tremble out of her voice. The first tear spilled, hot and heavy, down her cheek. Without thinking, she reached to brush it away with her left hand, but there weren’t enough fingers, and the fingers she no longer had were hurting, and she was hurting, and suddenly the tears were streaming. “I know. I just wanted you to know, too. That I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.”

“Oh, Ellie,” Dina said, and crossed the distance between them. Gentle hands descended upon Ellie’s shaking shoulders, rubbing slow circles into her arms and down to her hands, which were deftly caught in a pair much steadier than hers. The motions themselves were routine - her panic attack in the barn sprung to mind - but couldn’t have felt less so. Dina hovered her fingertips over the stumps of her two missing digits and Ellie flinched away, an automatic response. 

Dina made a small noise in the back of her throat at that, as if wounded on Ellie’s behalf. She was close, so close now, and leaning closer still, sweet brown eyes looming in Ellie’s watery vision, pupils blown wide. Then, Dina touched her lips to the corner of Ellie’s mouth, almost too softly to be called a kiss, their tears mingling in a bittersweet, salty cocktail of joy and sadness. How could humans possibly contain so many emotions? It was inconceivable to think that this had been inside her, all this time, and only now was she falling apart at the seams.

“Ellie... I think we’re both different now.”

Nodding, Ellie slumped her head against Dina’s chest, swallowing hard to suppress her sobs; where the words should have hurt, Dina wrapped her arms around her and squeezed, rocking her gently back and forth as she cried, and rejection had never felt so comforting. This was an end, not a beginning, Ellie knew that absolutely, but this last kindness, this tender embrace, was still more than she deserved, and for that she was grateful. Now, all that she had endured did mean something, after all; it meant that she could see Dina, that she could bear witness to their son and to the remnants of their old life one last time, and move on, even if only physically. It wasn’t the way she could have chosen - but then again, she had forfeited her right to choose a long time ago - but finally, she could move on.

There was a long, low, inhale above her, a sigh, and then: “But maybe, with some time, I could get to know this Ellie Williams. If that’s okay. 

Ellie pulled back and met Dina’s shining gaze. Her sincerity was as palpable as it was shocking, and Ellie noticed that her cheeks were shining, too. Dina laughed wetly.

“And besides - JJ’s missed you.”


End file.
